Early Review: Another Kind of Dead

Kelly Meding
Urban Fantasy
384 pages
Dreg City #3
Random House

Synopsis:
Been there. Done that. Evy Stone is a former Dreg Bounty Hunter who died and came back to life with some extraordinary powers. Now all but five people in the world think she is dead again, this time for good—immolated in a factory fire set specifically for her. Evy and Wyatt, her partner/lover/friend, can no longer trust their former allies, or even the highest echelons of the Triads—the army of fighters holding back from an unsuspecting public a tide of quarreling, otherworldly creatures—they can trust only each other. Because when the Triads raided a macabre, monster-filled lab of science experiments and hauled away the remnants, they failed to capture their creator: a brilliant, vampire-obsessed scientist with a wealth of powerful, anti-Dreg weaponry to trade for what he desires most of all—Evy Stone: alive and well, and the key to his ultimate experiment in mad science.

Review:
I love when a book makes me cry out "WHAT?!" before I'm even a third of the way through.  A) I know I'm in for a great story that's bound to keep me on the edge of my seat and 2) I enjoy the hubs' look of concern and questions of "everything ok?" as though these characters are close friends... makes me snort every time. I always seem to get this reaction with Ms. Meding's books.  And Another Kind of Dead is no exception.  Around page 125 I sucked air and expelled horror and a little excitement.... exactly what I want from my UF books.

Speaking of what I want out of UF, Evy Stone is the perfect heroine and AKOD seals her fate as one of my all-time favorites.  She is such a fighter. She's the modern-day superhero.  She fights and never gives up. Even when she's been beaten down, she rises and fights some more.  But all of her spirit and grit hasn't turned her cold.  She's the exact opposite. Her emotions are in check and her human reactions make you literally feel her pain.  At least I did.  There was a scene towards the end of the book where I realized I was crying and it wasn't because of some great lose, but solely because of the emotions Evy was feeling at the time.  I was stunned by how much I was affected.  I could read about her forever.

The over-all story and plot was so great.  Dark, but not overly so. Tender in just the right spots, difficult and gristly in others.  I ate it all up and am still asking for more.  The relationship between Evy and Wyatt is exactly what I want from a hero/heroine.  They work together, but they're not perfect.  They make mistakes but have triumphs too. And, most importantly, it all works with the story.

Bottom Line: My new rug has a worn tread pattern in it, my best jeans have permanent stains on the knees from my sweaty palms, and my nails have been chewed to the quick.  Yeah it's that good.

5 stars